Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Coming from an area of regional Queensland, I welcome the opportunity to speak today about the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. Those of us who grew up in regional or rural Australia, as I did, know the value of telecommunications and know about the advances that are being made in telecommunications every day. As I recall, my phone number when I first was married was Boondooma 7H. My father and mother and my wife and I shared a party line, with a phone that was connected to a manual exchange which operated on a 24-hour basis but was rarely used after 9 pm and was certainly not used before 7 am unless there was an emergency. Not only were those communications seen as essential at that time but we were grateful for what we had. When my parents moved to that property in 1953, they had no telephone at all. In fact, during the cyclone in 1953, to make a phone call my mother had to walk two kilometres pushing a pram with my elder brother in it and our two elder siblings at foot.

So in my lifetime I have seen telecommunications come a long way. In particular, I have seen their ability to allow businesses to communicate, to gain information and to communicate with their customer base. I have seen their ability to allow people to communicate across very long distances, and also across short distances, in an emergency very quickly. I remember the first major advance in communications in our district as being the introduction of UHF two-way radios. A great thing they were, because we then connected our tractor fleet to them and I was able to call my wife and ask her to bring down this or that particular spare part or even an extra biscuit for afternoon tea if I thought I was really on my luck that day.

We then saw telecommunications really move into the modern era: that being the introduction of mobile phones, followed very quickly by the internet. The advances of the internet and the ability of regional areas to access reasonable internet facilities are that this amendment bill could severely impact. The amendment proposed is yet another stark revelation of the attitude of the Rudd government towards the hardworking communities of rural and regional Australia, such as the community I am proud to have been born into, and that I am now proud to represent, and the communities I have got to know through a range of professions prior to and certainly since coming to this place. They are communities of men and women who know what it is to work very hard and, dare I say, also know what it is like to play very hard. They are men and women who endure a great deal of hardship with the belief that they will be able to earn a real income, a real living, based not only on their own skills but also on the use of whatever technology is available to them.

As a member of parliament whose electorate is based around one of Australia’s largest regional cities—in fact, Australia’s largest inland provincial city—and extends to one of Queensland’s real rural heartlands, I can say that the value of communications resources to the people of regional Australia cannot be overstated. They are resources that the previous coalition government acknowledged. That led to the establishment of the $2 billion Communications Fund, part of a package to ensure the ongoing adequacy of telecommunications services in rural and regional Australia.

We know that there will be further advances in technology that we cannot even imagine today. We know that technology will continue to develop and evolve. The great advances that I have just mentioned that have occurred in my short lifetime will be replicated many times over with technology that will not only continue to improve communications in the bush but, most importantly, continue to improve communications for all Australia. But we also know that, based on the density of population, many of those technologies will not be delivered to the bush unless there is a long-term, adequate funding mechanism to ensure that.

This amendment legislation attacks the very heart of what the previous government acknowledged through the establishment of the $2 billion Communications Fund, a package to ensure the ongoing adequacy of telecommunications in regional Australia. The interest from that fund, estimated to be up to $400 million every three years, was to be quarantined to be used to finance the government’s response to independent reviews of regional communications services.

In September 2007, the coalition government reinforced the Communications Fund’s position as a perpetual fund with the passage of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. Rural and remote communities welcomed the former coalition government’s commitment to ensuring that they would have access to modern telecommunications services with targeted assistance that would be available not just as a one-off initiative. Not only were they comfortable with this and very happy to see that fund established but they also felt secure that their future needs would be addressed.

If you live in a district like the one where I grew up, where the population now is probably a quarter of what it was when I was there, you can look forward to a situation where the density of population in regional Australia will, at best, hold, if not decline. In that situation, to expect that new technology will be installed on a commercial basis is unrealistic because there simply will not be enough people to pay for it. The spending of the resources from the Communications Fund was tied to the recommendations for a regular and independent review of the needs of regional and remote areas and then the addressing of those needs. The first review is currently underway, under the chairmanship of Dr Bill Glasson AO, and is looking at the progress of upgrades of telecommunications services and at delivering recommendations as to how the interest from the fund could be best spent.

Mr Deputy Speaker, do not be led to believe that there have not been significant advances in regional telecommunications; there have been. Under our government, access to the internet and to mobile phone telecommunications did increase, but it is far from perfect and there is much more to be done. This fund provided a way for that to happen. Now we see the Rudd Labor government looking to trash this forward-looking initiative by pilfering and siphoning off funds that were meant to safeguard services in all areas, for the sake of the Labor Party’s narrow, city focused broadband proposal. It is incumbent on the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, who is in the other place, to be held accountable to all Australians and explain to all of them, not just those who live in major metropolitan areas, how his and the Prime Minister’s plan to implement the review committee’s recommendations without the resources of the Communications Fund is going to be carried out. The deafening silence on this count betrays the truth.

The Prime Minister, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and federal Labor in general are showing their complete contempt for regional areas: cutting short this process and sending a strong message that the Labor Party simply do not care about how telecommunications services are delivered in regional areas. In seeking to repeal the safeguards so deliberately put in place to ensure no extension of the digital divide, the Rudd Labor government have shown their disdain for rural and regional Australians. I must say that that is an ironic twist, given the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, made such a big deal about how he had such great rural credentials. In fact, I think he claimed that he had been a dairy farmer in his time, although I think both you, Deputy Speaker Scott, and I would be happy to challenge him in a milking contest—perhaps we could also include Senator Joyce, who claims to be a gun milker. I have not milked for 30 years, but I am sure it is like riding a bicycle. We had the Prime Minister saying he was a person of rural stock, he understood rural issues and he knew what was important to rural people. If he understands what is important to them, he will not allow the passage of this amendment bill—but, of course, we know he will.

Over the past several months it has become all too clear that, as far as the members of the Labor Party are concerned, rural and regional Australia simply does not rate—which equates to an act of betrayal. As you would know, Deputy Speaker Scott, if you claim to be of rural stock then you are always of rural stock. You can take the boy out of the bush, but you cannot take the bush out of the boy. Perhaps it is just another example of the hollowness of the Prime Minister and the facade that he paints constantly. Actions do speak louder than words.

We have heard much rhetoric, supposedly hard-hitting, from the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation about the government’s desire to cut spending. The government has so little respect for the people of rural and regional Australia that it has, by executing those cuts, frozen the funds that are vital for rural community programs—well, nearly all the funds: we do have the worship of deadwood by the Labor Party and the spending of funds in that area. But, if we look across the vast array of programs that run in rural and regional Australia and the importance that they have in those communities, we can see that they have been slashed. I do not speak just of Regional Partnerships; I speak also of programs like the one I saw administered in the Jondaryan school, programs where funds were made available to small schools to purchase vital equipment. We have seen the Rudd Labor government stubbornly refuse to commit to vital roads infrastructure in regional areas, instead being content to pour more attention and cash towards the big cities. Like the carers bonus debacle, where Labor mercilessly left the most vulnerable in our society grappling with them for answers for days, we see that the government is once again upsetting and unsettling the foundations of another important group in our society.

The Communications Fund provides a vital safeguard to some of the most disadvantaged consumers in both rural and remote regions. Now the Labor Party and the Rudd Labor government are creating and nurturing conditions of uncertainty for people in those rural and regional areas. The smash-and-grab raiding of the Communications Fund will leave those people who choose to live outside metropolitan areas wondering, no doubt with a high level of trepidation, what the future and the future of their communications hold for them. Under Labor’s planned changes to the Communications Fund, these people will no longer have any indication of exactly what standard of telecommunications services they will be able to access. What Labor does not seem to realise is that there is more to telecommunications than just a broadband connection to every inner city high-rise apartment. Not only could Labor’s ill-conceived raid on the Communications Fund condemn the businesspeople, the mums and dads and the schoolchildren of regional Australia to a second-class standard of communications but, more importantly, taking away the guarantee of service could have a life-or-death consequence in regions that already pay a heavy price for the tyranny of distance.

Not content with leaving regional Australia out in the cold, the government now wants to further the digital divide. It plans to raid the future-proofing measures that were put in place by the coalition government so that regional and rural Australia could be certain of its future. This action by the Labor Party means that rural and regional Australians can only look forward to being left behind in an area of daily and rapid improvement. Why should the people of Toowoomba or Pittsworth be forced to live as second-class telecommunications citizens, compared to those who live in Brisbane, Sydney or, indeed, the Prime Minister’s electorate of Griffith and the Treasurer’s electorate of Lilley? There is a very real risk of the ill-thought-out plans of the Prime Minister and Labor, which declare open season on the Communications Fund, delivering just that uncertainty and just that second-class telecommunications system to the people in the bush. I have to wonder if this is not a sign of things to come, with Labor raiding funds to pay for half-baked policy. It has not taken them long, and it sure brings to mind the old slogan that you cannot trust Labor with money. You just cannot trust Labor with money.

The former coalition government outlined a clear plan to make sure that all Australians, especially those in regional areas, had access to high-speed broadband services, without the need to raid the Communications Fund. That plan was to provide 100 per cent of the country with broadband access at retail prices on par with the competitive prices in metropolitan areas, while keeping the Communications Fund and our commitment to rural and regional Australia completely intact. The Communications Fund was designed to help secure the future of rural and regional Australians. Now it is shaping up to be just another victim of Labor’s steamrolling budget committee. Why should the participation of my constituents in the information society be held to ransom by the Rudd Labor government? Why should the Rudd Labor government use money that has been set aside for projects for all regional Australians to the advantage of a city focussed electorate?

Communications will be an area which will advance Australia a long way over our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children. If anyone is left behind, or if we see a system or a scheme or a course of action that causes a vital part of our community—not the biggest part, but possibly the smallest part—to be left behind, we will be committing that section of the community to a lower standard of living and a lower standard of social justice. In this amendment bill we see Labor doing what we knew they would do—firstly, not be able to manage money and, secondly, abdicate the representation of rural and regional Australia. I ask them to consider that and I ask the minister to withdraw this amendment bill.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure, but also with some sorrow, that I speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. When I was first elected to this parliament 9½ years ago, one of the two biggest problems with telecommunications in rural areas—and I have the honour to represent a very rural seat, the seat of Barker in South Australia—was fax lines not working. At that time fax lines were very much in demand and sometimes, in some areas, they were not working properly. We fixed those problems. The second big problem was the mobile phone coverage and the spectre of losing the analog service. A deal done by the previous Labor government saw the phasing out of the analog service—a very good service for rural areas—without the provision of any replacement. So, when I was first elected, you could travel hundreds of kilometres where a digital mobile phone would not work. For example, you could go from Kingston to Meningie, about 150 kilometres, and not get any reception until you got to within a couple of kilometres of the Meningie township. Then, as soon as you left Meningie, you did not get anything more until you got to Tailem Bend. So in a large part of my electorate I could not use my phone and nor could my constituents. This was a result of the previous Labor government’s policy of getting rid of the analog service without providing any replacement.

We came up with CDMA, which was a pretty good service. It was a digital type of service and it worked well in rural areas. It was working much better than the old analog service, which did have some weaknesses in that it could cut in and out. At least with the CDMA service we had much better coverage all around the electorate. I could drive virtually anywhere in my electorate and pick up a CDMA service. We have had some problems with the introduction of the Next G service, and that is why we appointed Bill Glasson to inquire into it and ensure that we would not have the CDMA turned off until we had equivalent services or better. Some of the earlier handsets were not working as well as they could have been, which was a problem—if I remember rightly—that we had with some of the digital mobile phones when they first came in. It is important that we provide pretty close to as good a service as we have in city areas.

In September 2005 the Howard government created the Communications Fund to secure the future of telecommunications services in rural, regional and remote Australia. We did this because there were always going to be pretty good services in city areas where, when you had lots of people, businesses could afford to lay down broadband. We also had ADSL+, which provided pretty quick service. You could have different levels of that service in city areas but obviously for rural areas it was never going to be the case that companies would come in and make a profit without some help from the government. For decades in Australia, rural services were subsidised so that rural areas could get a reasonable amount of service. We opened the Communications Fund account with a $2 billion capital injection. As I said, it was a fund with the needs of people in rural and regional Australia in mind. The original Communications Fund act 2005 and the subsequent Communications Fund amending act 2007 provided that the fund must hold at least $2 billion. The purpose of that Communications Fund was to generate income to fund the government’s response to the recommendations of the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee.

The spending of the income stream from the fund was to be tied to independent and regular reviews of telecommunications in rural, regional and remote Australia. I want to reinforce this point because there is a significant difference between accessing the income stream generated from the fund, as was the original intention when the fund was established, and drawing down the capital—as is the Rudd government’s intent with this bill. They are basically stealing the $2 billion from this fund that was set up for people in rural and remote areas who do not have the same sorts of services as city people. If we are going to be fair to all Australians, that sort of fund is necessary. But the Rudd government are drawing down the capital from this fund and there will be nothing left. This Rudd government certainly have their hands in the cookie jar.

There is a very disturbing trend emerging from the Rudd Labor government—that is, taking funds away from rural and regional Australians. I remember on election night that the excited new Prime Minister of Australia said he would govern for all Australians. But so far we have seen nothing more than what we have seen already from the Labor state governments around Australia. They are very city-centric and they are taking away programs that are designed to deal with the problems of rural people—for example, they are taking $47 million away from rural scholarships. We talk about the skills crisis and they take $47 million away from rural scholarships, which are designed to provide skills in rural areas. In fact, I was part of an inquiry by the former House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry that presented a landmark report entitled Skills: rural Australia’s need. It is very important that we look at the differing skills needs around Australia—whether in the city or the country—and, as a government, we have to respond to those needs. But not this government. The biggest cuts that they have made so far have been in rural areas all around Australia—whether it be to drought funding, farm business or rural scholarships. And I have no doubt that, under this government, we will see more funding go to roads, for example, in city areas than we would have seen under a Howard government.

The Rudd government are even stripping away $10 million in drought research. They have stripped $50 million away from the national water plan and $50 million from farm apprenticeships, as I said. This is certainly a very strong indication of the modus operandi of this government. They are very city-centric and, frankly, quite prepared to take funding away from rural areas. In most cases, rural areas have a greater need for funding from governments. These actions show a lack of care for people who live in rural and regional areas. These people are the salt of the earth. They work hard and are certainly very community minded people. The Rudd government and, in particular, the Minister for Climate Change and Water have turned their backs on the people of the River Murray through inaction and their attitude of not caring. This bill is a further stripping away of funds earmarked for rural and regional Australians.

Just a couple of days ago in this place, the Treasurer said, ‘We are going to show some restraint.’ However, it seems that Labor has coined a new meaning for ‘restraint’, and that new meaning is to hit rural and regional Australians hard, hit them first and hit them where it will hurt them the most. In this case, Labor intends to shake every cent out of that $2 billion piggy bank, leaving absolutely nothing for the future, all the while spending it in some doubtful areas where it is not necessary. As I said earlier, the telco businesses are quite happy to spend the money on infrastructure in city areas because they will get a return for that money. The all too evident problem with this approach is that when the cookie jar is empty, or the last coin has been shaken from the piggy bank, there will be nothing left. The fund will be gone, used up in one fell swoop, with no guarantee of outcomes or returns. Rural and regional Australians will be left with no fund to address their unique and critical telecommunications requirements. There is nothing restraint-like in Labor’s robbing of the coffers.

The $2 billion Communications Fund and the $1.1 billion plan for direct capital investment under the Connect Australia initiative was to ensure the ongoing adequacy of telecommunications services in rural, regional and remote parts of Australia. This was not some special treatment for rural areas because, even with that spending, they were still not going to have services that were as good as those in city areas. Services would not be up to what one would expect if one lived in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide or Hobart, or some of the major cities around Australia, but it was at least going to bring them up to an adequate level of fast broadband. Our solution of using a mixture of some of that fibre to the node to the home, some of that WiMAX and some of that satellite was going to cover everyone in Australia. It is possible but it is not economically feasible to do fibre to the node to farms and to homes in rural areas. It is simply not physically or economically feasible to do so. So we came up with a solution that gave up to 20 megabytes a second, I think the figure was, for broadband using WiMAX and wireless services—which will often use the fibre with a main trunk, but from there you are able to use the WiMAX services.

As I understand, there will be 100 million people using that service before very long. In fact, in some ways it gives some extra advantages because of the mobility. You can pick up your computer, take it down to the shed and still get the service. You do not need to be plugged into a landline for it. So it did actually have some services. It is not quite as quick as super broadband but it is certainly up to 20 times quicker than a phone line, for example, with dial-up services. So it is certainly much quicker and able to give a pretty good service to rural areas. But we hear nothing of that from this government.

Just last year the Howard government reinforced the Communications Fund as a perpetual fund to protect its capital. Labor now wants to get rid of that protection so it can raid the fund. It flies in the face of economic sense to deplete the capital of the Communications Fund in this manner. Nor can Labor even begin to justify the expenditure. Its broadband network plan is ill principled, half-baked, totally city-centric and ineffective. There is more to telecommunications than broadband. I have people in my electorate of Barker who still cannot receive in some places a halfway decent mobile telephone service.

While in government, we varied Telstra’s licensing conditions so it could not switch off CDMA until the Next G service was up to par. It remains a fact that constituents in my electorate continue to experience dropouts, black spots and inability to reliably access Next G services. Barely a few days before the CDMA network was to be shut down by Labor at the end of January, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy reluctantly agreed to delay it because he was all too aware of the problems of the network. When the safety and security of rural constituents in the electorate continue to be compromised because of black spots and dropouts of the Next G service, it is no wonder that neither they nor I have any confidence in Labor’s thin-on-the-ground broadband proposal—whatever it may be, because I do not think we have seen anything concrete to hang our coats on. I am particularly concerned about the safety problems and the impaired ability of my constituents to do business in my electorate once Telstra shuts down the CDMA service. We managed to persuade it to delay the abolition of CDMA, but there is still a lot of evidence that problems and a lack of access in the Next G network remain.

There has been much blame shifting about handsets. Earlier this week the Australian Communications and Media Authority found six types of handsets to be inadequate during testing of the Next G network. But Minister Conroy says he cannot tell potential purchasers about the substandard handsets they should avoid purchasing because that information is commercial-in-confidence. How stupid is that? Indeed, ‘confidence’ is not the word that comes to mind for Labor’s mismanagement of telecommunications in general and this bill in particular.

On the one hand, last year Labor endorsed the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee, chaired by Dr Bill Glasson, and its task of reviewing the progress of the Australian government’s upgrades of telecommunications services in rural Australia. Specifically, that committee wants to determine how the interest earned from the $2 billion Communications Fund, around $400 million, will be spent. On the other hand, Labor has hijacked the very funding set aside to action that review committee’s finding. Labor might claim, as the member for Ballarat did in this place on Wednesday, that it is about keeping families connected. The member offered the example of older Australians communicating with family overseas via the internet. I can only assume that the member was referring to city based older Australians, because there is certainly no guarantee that rural and regional Australians will enjoy the same ease of broadband connection and communication.

Minister Conroy struggled on ABC radio last week, where he was at a loss to say what Telstra’s announcement would mean for the OPEL joint regional broadband venture between Optus and Elders which was announced last year. In the same interview Minister Conroy said that taking fibre to the home was on the agenda—wacky do!—but later contradicted himself to say that it was really up to the proponents to put forward proposals. Specifications were not available. Rather, Labor said it was keeping an open mind. ‘Thin on the ground’ does not begin to describe this proposal. I would have categorised it as up in the air, with the fairies, and completely lacking in specifications and substance. But on the strength of a nebulous broadband proposal—possibly fibre to the home, possibly not; could reach the bush, perhaps not—it is all very uncertain and non-specific. Yet we are expected to raid the Future Fund for $2 billion of its capital to fund it.

The very fund that was earmarked to protect people in the bush and to assure them parity of telecommunications services is being denuded for who knows what. We established this Communications Fund to provide a guaranteed income stream to fund hard infrastructure and services for regional communities, such as additional mobile phone towers, broadband provision and even backhaul fibre capabilities. It was our brief to the Glasson committee that they place particular emphasis on the underserved areas of remote and rural Australia. But instead of waiting for the committee’s conclusions and recommendations to ensure adequate service for people in the bush we have Labor raiding the very fund that was set up to help those people. This will inevitably mean that the recommendations of the committee for rural and regional Australians will not be able to be acted upon because the funding has been taken away.

The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government said in this place that the Rudd government’s plan to expend the contents of the fund is consistent with the Communications Fund. I reject that statement entirely. This is another con job on rural, regional and remote Australians. Alarmingly, this bill allows the Rudd government not only to raid the fund but to then spend it all on anything it chooses. It could expend the fund on shares or interests in companies, make unconditional grants to telecommunications companies or even directly purchase assets and equipment connected to the broadband network. There is nothing in this bill that will give rural and regional Australians any guarantee of access to a first-class broadband network.

(Quorum formed)

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How pleased I am to see a good crowd in here to hear what I have to say; thank you for attending! I address the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. As has become the norm in this parliament, this is yet another assault on rural and regional Australia. It is an attack on a quarantined, guaranteed income put in place to ensure that rural Australia will be serviced long into the future—a guaranteed income of $400 million every three years going forward forever just stripped away and supposedly spent on a broadband network, but we do not know where. This income stream was to be the future of rural and regional Australia, the next wave of technology, to provide regional Australia with the tools to compete in this modern world.

Like the recent announcements on taxes for heavy transport in the form of enormous increases for registration and a rise in fuel excise, this once again proves that the government has little empathy for regional and rural Australia and sees us as the skinny kid on the beach to kick around. The government will of course claim a mandate for this move; it is after all a policy they took to the last election. But I believe I also have a mandate, and that is to oppose this bill. The issue of broadband rollout and the ongoing provision of technological services to rural and regional Australia was one of the central issues of my successful electoral campaign.

I repeatedly warned the electorate of the intention of the Labor Party to make a raid on rural Australia’s future, seizing the $2 billion fund put in place to ensure our ability to be serviced in the fast-changing world of telecommunications. I warned that the government’s proposal to extend a fibre-to-the-node network to 98 per cent of Australia is inappropriate and undeliverable.

Even now, as the Labor Party bring this legislation before the parliament, they still have no practical plan on how to achieve this rollout—12 months after the announcement of the government’s intentions and still no plan. What will happen is that the $2 billion will be spent in the planning phase and the beginning of the city rollout, all at the expense of our country businesses, students and families. On page 6 of the concluding comments for this bill, it says:

... the Bill leaves open the possibility that the original focus on telecommunications in rural, regional and remote Australia will be abandoned.

Let us have a look at the historical crocodile tears of the Labor Party on this issue. On page 3 of the Labor Party senators’ dissenting report on the T3 sale, which included the establishment of the telecommunication fund—and I point that this was way back when Labor professed to care about rural electorates—it says:

... the Howard Government has failed to ensure that telecommunications services in rural and regional Australia are up to scratch.

The Labor Party was clearly concerned about rural Australia then. The report goes on to say—again on page 3:

Labor Senators do not believe that the quantum of the Communications Fund will be adequate to address these problems.

Clear and welcome concern for rural Australia. So what would you expect this government to do to alleviate this problem on coming to power? Will they make sure this alleged shortfall is made up? Will they increase the fund? No. Their compassion and commitment to rural Australia leads them to abolish the fund, take the money away and spend it who knows where, on a nebulous rollout plan—almost certainly it will all be spent well before the issue of country broadband even gets on the agenda. After all, this scheme is not even due for completion until 2013. Regional Australia’s provision for an equitable broadband network will be well and truly gone long before then.

This really is a case of big brother raiding little brother’s piggy bank so he can take his girlfriend to the pictures. He knows he is strong enough to get away with it no matter what his little brother does, he knows it will make his girlfriend happy and he cannot see far enough into the future to see the downside. But there will be one, because when Christmas comes around little brother will not have enough money for his present. Even if he did, big brother would be the last person on his shopping list. So there will be an electoral backlash for this decision. Country electors will not be happy when they are left behind and they realise the cupboard is bare and the money all gone.

I refer to a quote by a former Prime Minister, Paul Keating. I do not make a habit of quoting Mr Keating but I think this one is worth it: ‘You should never stand between a state premier and a bucket of money.’ The Prime Minister was never a state premier, but we do know he was the next best thing to it, as the senior bureaucrat behind the throne during the Goss years in Queensland. He certainly learnt the behaviour pattern Mr Keating was referring to. He could not wait to get his hands on the money. He could not wait to get stuck into the cash that belongs to rural Australia to ensure they did not have to go back cap in hand to government every time the inevitable happens, every time there is a new technological innovation.

The purpose of the telecommunications fund was to provide an ongoing income stream for rural Australia ad infinitum, an estimated $400 million every three years going forward, forever. Where is Labor’s guarantee for the future? How will they ensure that rural Australia does not operate at a permanent disadvantage in this vital area of telecommunications in the future? The lack of information about the government’s proposals is telling. Where is the plan to deliver fibre to the node for 98 per cent of the nation? Can this be achieved in an electorate like Grey, which covers more than 900,000 square kilometres, where we have centres as distant as Ceduna and Penong way out on the west coast and Coober Pedy and Marla Bore in the north? Many of these remote communities are nowhere near phone exchanges, and the people living on farms are in the same situation. The nature of fibre to the node prescribes that you must live within four kilometres of an exchange. For large numbers of people in my electorate, that unfortunately is not the case. It just shows how out of touch this concept is with the reality on the ground.

What will happen in the future? I would like to take you back just a little. I was quite taken by the remarks of the member for Groom when he talked about the party line phone set-up he had when he was first married. I still remember when our district was one of the last in Australia to move to fully automated phone exchanges and underground phone lines. What luxury, moving to those beautiful round dials that went click, click, click and no longer picking up the receiver to see if someone else was on the line. It did have some advantages, though. Mrs Bentley could always tell you not to waste your time because the Baldocks had gone to bed or were away on holidays for a few days.

When we moved to automatic phones it was the height of technology. No-one could possibly imagine what could be done to improve the system—we had the max already. How wrong could we have been? We collectively had no idea of photocopiers or fax machines, of mobile phones, of computers and digital technology. It is an oft used quote, but I will use it again anyway. The head of IBM in 1943 famously said, ‘There is a world market for maybe five computers.’ An engineer in advanced computing systems with IBM in 1968 said of the microchip, ‘But what is it good for?’ We are only limited by our imagination. Unfortunately, in this case, the government are severely limited by their imagination. They think broadband is the automatic phone of the sixties, the last word in technological revolutions.

The question remains: how will we pay for the next wave? The passing of the bill to enable the T3 sale, establishing the telecommunications fund, was the opportunity to take the politics out of providing an essential service in a competitive market. It was a breakthrough, a long-term commitment to rural Australia. As it will stand if this bill is passed, the country will have to go cap in hand to the government every time we need an update. I strongly oppose this amendment bill as just another attack on rural Australia. It is ill thought out. It appears to me that the government has no plan to deal with the explosion of telecommunications which we will continue to see in the 21st century. We do not know yet what tomorrow offers. There has been talk about telecommunications networks running down powerlines. Do we know what the next step will be? Certainly my imagination is not enough to present that, but we do know it will happen. As certainly as night follows day and as certainly as the sun will come up tomorrow, we know that there will be the next jump. And we do know that there will not be a fund to pay for it.

While I recognised earlier in my speech that the government went to the electorate and told them what they were going to do with this issue, in opposing this bill I feel it is my responsibility to my electors to stand up and make their point. My electors in the vast electorate of Grey feel as though they are being shortchanged by this policy. We are going to have to concentrate, as we go forward, on how we bring the government back to the playing field where we can say we need that commitment from the government again. Is it going to wait until we achieve another Liberal government so that we can say, ‘We can look after the country again in the future’? I hope not. I hope that in fact we can achieve that now by opposing this bill and leaving the telecommunications fund in place.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008 I take up where my colleague the member for New England left off. He referred to the $2 billion Communications Fund that Senator Barnaby Joyce claimed that he had secured. There is no doubt, referring to that fund, that he did play an instrumental part in securing that money. But our damnable problem in Australia is that so many people have believed that the National Party would look after their interests. They have not looked after our interests, however, and this is a classic case. In the vote on the sale of Telstra at the Central Council of the National Party in Longreach, all but about 12 or 15 of the people associated with two of the federal members who were there—they brought their friends, relatives and close associates—voted against the sale of Telstra, and voted with considerable aggression. The then vice-president, Rowell Walton, subsequently resigned from the party. He could not see the point in staying in a party which had resolved, almost unanimously, to go in a certain direction. Then two weeks later our senator from Queensland, Barnaby Joyce—and you yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, in the chair this evening, had the decency at least to stay quiet about it—went out and told us what a good thing it was for us. He convinced nobody; he just further damaged the reputation of the party.

The member for New England referred to the $100 million per year interest on the $2 billion fund. I do not doubt this, but most of us would know there is capital improvement work being carried out by Telstra in our areas. There is not as much as we would like, but we know it is taking place. They were already spending $400 million per year to improve capital items and to improve services. At least half of those services were in regional areas. So there was already $400 million per year being spent in this area. The then government made a big thing out of guaranteeing $100 million. Mr Deputy Speaker, you would have to believe in the tooth fairy if you believed that Telstra were not going to simply take that $100 million per year and cut their expenditure from $400 million to $300 million. It was just a con. I do not blame Senator Joyce for being taken in by it. He was new to this place and he got conned. I think he learned a lot out of realising he should not believe what he is told by his superiors. He came off very badly from that—quite unfairly to him. But I and the rest of Queensland dearly wish that Barnaby had stood by his guns. He said he would oppose it. He did not oppose it and he broke a lot of hearts, as I said at the time in debate with him.

As late as last week, two of the very great gulf families banded together. James Pickering and his wife, Lea, are from two of the great families of the Gulf Country and they came together, married and have begun a family. Lea rang me up and said, ‘Bob, I have got enormous difficulties. We really cannot educate our kids on station properties now without a speedy broadband access and I cannot get it.’ She went into the details of why and how. A valuer rang me up and said, ‘Every single valuation I do in regional Australia, I have to dial into RP Data.’ RP Data, of course, is the firm in Australia that does all the evaluations. Both the Cattalans are very proudly Innisfail boys, so I do a little tiny bit of skiting there as I go past. Every valuation that is done in Australia—every single house transaction and every single property transaction in this country—requires access to RP Data, which is through the broadband network. If you do not have it, then you cannot have the valuations carried out. Obviously, if a valuer who is based, say, in Innisfail has to face up against a valuer who is based in Cairns and one has got speedy access and one has got slow access, then the one with the speedy access will be able to charge much, much less than the one with slow access. This illustrates graphically the enormous shortcomings that now exist where we do not have equal access to broadband. The third case that comes to mind is that of an engineer working on the Atherton Tablelands. He said that in his job he must have quick and speedy access to information on the internet. I do not think any of us would need an explanation as to why an engineering consultant would need speedy access to broadband. He said he is constantly losing business to the people in Cairns who have relatively speedy broadband access compared with his broadband access.

Each of these cases graphically illustrates the pain and the disadvantage suffered by us in country Australia as a result of an unequal broadband delivery service. So we applaud the government. There are those who said there was not much in the ALP proposals. Mind you, if I were in their situation and had IR running in my favour I would not have said too much either—I would have just enjoyed the ride—but they did make this commitment, and in fact it was a very good commitment, and we hope that they honour their promises. But, like Barnaby Joyce, I will reserve my opinion until I see the action on the ground, and I am sure my colleague from the south of my electorate will agree with me in this area.

There is a tiny township called Croydon right up almost at the Gulf of Carpentaria—you throw a stone and it lands in the sea almost, when you are at Croydon. I have been going to a cattle station there for many, many years. Only about 150 people live in Croydon. On my last official full-day visit there, I was very surprised to run into four separate people who had moved from cities—Cairns, Townsville, Sydney and Brisbane—and chosen to live in Croydon. I said, ‘Why would you suddenly decide to live in Croydon?’ They said: ‘Because we sold our house in Brisbane’—or wherever—‘and we got $300,000 for it. We were able to purchase a house up here for a very small proportion of that, so we could come up here and have $200,000 in the bank.’

If there are enough people doing this, then it will reverse the imbalance in Australia’s population distribution, which is costing us. The cost of providing the extra water in Brisbane is in the range of thousands of millions of dollars. The only water provision they can get is to drink their own sewage water, which is not a very happy alternative. We could get people moving out there instead. With the wonderful 24 television channels or whatever it is you can get off the satellite now, you can watch television in the city or in the bush. We have equal access. In the very important area of broadband, I have given three illustrations to demonstrate where kids are going to be at a disadvantage or where businesses are going to be at such a disadvantage that they may even have to close. I will give another example. Modern technology can help us greatly in the bush. Satellite television is an example. Broadband is another—if you can give us equal access.

In Brisbane, when I was in the state government, we were devising—in 1989, when the government fell—a spoke road system of very fast roads, and we had to upgrade the roads so that they would be safe at the speed of 120 kilometres an hour. We felt then that people could live 60 or 70 kilometres from Brisbane and still get to work in 20 minutes. There was a lot of work that needed to be done inside Brisbane itself. This spoke road concept depended upon our being able to provide for those people 60 kilometres from Brisbane exactly the same services that applied in Brisbane. That very much went to recreation, entertainment and television, and it would have gone to broadband. If we could do that, then the blockies—they call them blockies—could extend all the way from Brisbane, as they do now actually, up to Kingaroy, 250 kilometres. There is a lady shaking her head here. You do not think that is true?

Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because our freeways are now blocked by the people that you opened up to.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is an interesting concept. You build a freeway and it clogs—so, on the basis of her logic, we should build no freeways. What a ridiculous proposition to put before the parliament. She says we should not be building any freeways. Even if we were not talking about moving people out of the cities, one would think that it would be nice and helpful if they could move fairly swiftly in and out—at least get a bit of rest and relaxation from the cities. What an extraordinary statement! You are obviously a oncer in this place. I hope you are not, but for your sake I indicate: a few more comments like that and you will be.

The service guarantees were promised by us when I was a member of federal government. I said to the party room: ‘Is there anyone in this room that seriously believes that when Telstra is privatised we are going to get a guaranteed service? Put your hand up anyone in this room that believes that.’ I am not going to say—because I am not allowed to say—whether anyone put their hand up or not. But, if you were a betting man, I know which way you would be betting. It was a most extraordinary proposition that was put before us. I doubt whether there was anyone naive enough to believe it.

It was one of the only times one of my colleagues has asked me to leave this place because I got so angry. In 35 years, it is probably the only time I can remember. I have asked some of my colleagues to leave because they have got so angry I thought they were going to hit somebody. The only time I was asked to leave was on this issue. It was when National Party members were telling us that we were going to have an adequate service, that we were going to have a service guarantee. You can come to me and say, ‘We’re going to privatise Telstra,’ but do not come to me and tell me an absolutely outrageous lie—that you are going to guarantee the services to us. What an absolutely incredible proposition.

We now know who was right and who was wrong. In the little brochure that I put out there is a picture of Telstra customers at a town called Chilverton, outside of Ravenshoe in North Queensland. It is on the Atherton Tableland. I attended a number of meetings there. These people went without telephone services for two weeks. When the big boss of Telstra came up, I said: ‘Aren’t you blokes supposed to guarantee services? Don’t you get sued or something? Don’t you have to pay?’ He said yes. It was $37 or $42 a day or something for every day that the phone was out. So I said: ‘Can all these people be paid then? It has been out for two weeks.’ I do not know what the figure was, but it ran into thousands of dollars that some of those people were entitled to. He got all sheepish. He is a nice bloke, but it was a bit like in this House when people are answering questions that are a bit difficult. He ummed and ahed but eventually I had to pin him down. This is what he said: ‘Oh no, we don’t have to pay in this case because there was a major outage in the region.’ I said: ‘There were no major outages in the region at all. What the hell are you talking about?’ He said it was in Townsville. I said, ‘Are you telling me that we had six inches across the roads in Townsville over the space of about 12 hours and that caused major problems for Telstra in North Queensland?’ He did not answer me. He said: ‘Look, Bob, at this point I cannot answer that sort of question. I do not have the detailed knowledge.’ There is your guarantee of services! It is not worth the paper it was written on.

It was not until a state member and I waded in that it became a very brutal public issue for Telstra in the national arena. That was before they completed the sale, when things were still blowing in the wind and we were still working on a policy promise from the ALP that Telstra would not be sold—a promise which it flagrantly broke. In fairness to the ALP, that was on the eve of an election, but it was still a flagrant reversal of policy. The people of Chilverton will tell you what that guarantee of service is worth: it is worth absolutely nothing. The only good thing with Telstra being sold off was that otherwise there would have been no way in the world that a Telstra official would have come to Chilverton. They only came because they were taking a hell of a bath and were still very conscious of their PR, as they wanted to make sure that Telstra could be sold as fast as humanly possible before the ALP got in. They need not have worried—the ALP was going to sell it faster than the other mob.

I have talked before about Mary Murgatroyd in Julia Creek. A few people have said to me, ‘You have made Mary Murgatroyd in Julia Creek very famous.’ But does anyone seriously put the proposition forward that when Mary Murgatroyd’s telephone breaks in Julia Creek she is going to have exactly the same service fix-up time as a person in the suburbs of Brisbane? Is that seriously the proposition? We are pretty stupid sometimes and a bit slow in the bush—they reckon the sun gets at us when we are out mustering or whatever—but we ain’t that dumb that we will go and wear that one. People in the bush were quite staggered, particularly at the National Party. The ALP and the Liberal Party do not purport to represent the bush but the National Party does purport to represent the bush. The bush will be the place that suffers most from this. I believe the suburbs of Townsville and Cairns that I represent will be ill served. Big users will get their repairs pretty quickly but ordinary people in the suburbs will cop it sweet. We people of the country areas of Australia will get it very bad indeed.

We thank the government for their broadband proposals but we will hold our fire and our praise—and I think my southern colleague will agree with me—until we see the government actually carry this out. We were told a big lie—or at least it was a very big deceit—by the last government on the $2,000 million for the bush. We will now see whether this government is into deceit or whether they are fair dinkum and if they will supply a service which, in this case, every Australian should have and which, with modern technology, they should have at a reasonable price. If you want to cut down and eliminate the country people of Australia then just understand that this country’s 10 major export items provide half of the nation’s entire income from overseas and without good services you will wipe all of those industries out, because people will not live in the bush without those sorts of services. We will reserve our thanks until we see the reality. We thank the government for their rhetoric but all we have had to date is rhetoric. We will see whether they are more than rhetoric and whether they are fair dinkum.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on theTelecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. As the federal representative of a rural electorate, I vigorously oppose the amendment to part 9C of the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. If this bill passes both chambers it will allow this inexperienced, unfriendly government that is ruling Australia—the Rudd Labor government—to raid the Communications Fund. We will have a modern-day Ned Kelly, only Ned Kelly had a face mask. I am sure the member for Kennedy would support me, but he has left the chamber. They want to raid the fund that was put away in perpetuity by the former coalition government. We put it away to ensure that, when markets failed to provide new technologies for communications networks in outback and rural Australia, there was going to be a source of funds available without rural Australia having to rely on the federal budget.

Right now we are hearing daily from the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation that this is going to be a tough budget and that they are making cuts and looking for savings. I know just how hard it is to go to a Treasurer and the Expenditure Review Committee to get money when they are looking for savings in the budget. That is why we put this fund aside. That is why it was put away in perpetuity—so that no future government and no future communications minister would ever have to go back to the Expenditure Review Committee to get funds to meet market failures out in rural areas. This perpetual fund must remain a perpetual fund. The fund was designed so that only the earnings from the fund would be used to deal with those market failures, and that must remain the case in the future. I know and you know, I am sure, Mr Deputy Speaker, that market failures have occurred in the past and will occur in the future.

The new Prime Minister says he is a Prime Minister for all Australians. We saw those advertisements before the election, which the Prime Minister often cites, saying that the Prime Minister is a boy from the Queensland bush. Well, he left the bush a long time ago and he is totally out of touch with the needs of rural Australia today. If this legislation passes the House and the Senate, the Labor Party will be able to pilfer the $2 billion Communications Fund, which was put away by a responsible coalition government—a responsible economic manager—that was thinking of the future and governing for all Australians, unlike what we have already seen in the first 100 days of this government.

We saw this morning that fuel excise on road transport will be automatically indexed. We abolished automatic indexation, which was a policy of Keating’s Labor government. What we have seen from this government is a return to the Keating days. When Keating was Treasurer he introduced the automatic indexation of fuel excise. It automatically went up twice a year, without ever having to be scrutinised by the Senate or the House. It was automatic.

The other side are trying to portray this Prime Minister as a boy from the bush. Well, goodness me! If we took him to the outback of my electorate and turned him around once, he would be certainly lost. He would be totally out of place. He was never a boy from the bush—because if he were a boy from the bush, he would make sure that this legislation was not introduced into this parliament. Before it got to the Senate, he would say, ‘Look, I think I’ve made a mistake.’ He could do a ‘Peter Beattie’: ‘Look, I’ve made a mistake.’

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order on relevance. All that the member for Maranoa is doing is conducting his argument ad hominem, as the Romans would have called it. They are personal attacks on the Prime Minister, which I guess is in absence of an argument but it is not relevant.

Mal Washer (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Maranoa could perhaps be a little less provocative.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This legislation will allow the government to abolish the $2 billion fund that has been set aside.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Shorten interjecting

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is what it will allow the government to do. If the parliamentary secretary does not understand that, he ought to get a hold of the bill, read it and understand what this legislation will allow the government to do.

My electorate spans some 546,000 square kilometres. In the electorate of Maranoa, the last manual exchange was shut down during my time here in this place. Eighty-odd years after automatic telephones were introduced into Australia, the last manual service was abolished. That is an example of how, through successive governments over decades and decades, rural Australia was always last on the line when it came to upgrades of communications.

If the Communications Fund is abolished, rural Australia will be left in the sort of time warp that we inherited when we came to government. When we came to government—and you may remember this, Mr Deputy Speaker Washer; I certainly do—we had to deal with a situation where a perfectly adequate technology, the analog mobile telephone service, was abolished by an act of parliament, by law, without a replacement for rural Australia. That was under the minister, the then member for Dobell, under the Keating administration. They abolished it without a replacement. It was the coalition government that had to bring forward money to make sure we could replace that analog service with the CDMA network, which was a technology for rural Australia.

My electorate takes in some of the most remote towns and places in Australia, perhaps in the world, yet because of what we did in government, and our actions in committing to delivering internet to rural and remote Australia, these communities and pastoralists and very remote communities in my electorate can now get the internet. It was because of the actions of the coalition government and the funding that it put in place that the towns of Windorah, Birdsville and Bedourie can access the internet without dialling up through a very antiquated technology system. It was not done by Labor in its 13 prior years in government; it was the coalition government that did that. We not only brought the internet to these people in remote parts of Australia, such as Birdsville, Bedourie and Windorah, but also abolished the timed local call that these communities had to pay for just to ring their neighbour across the street or to ring the police station from a hotel. Those sorts of calls were timed local call in these communities. The coalition government pursued funding through expenditure review committees to upgrade the communications in these communities in remote parts of Australia.

Up until 1983 in the town of Birdsville, in the Diamantina shire in the west of my electorate, there were no telephone systems connecting the people of Birdsville to the outside world. The only way to communicate with the outside world was through the Royal Flying Doctor Service’s two-way radio network. The people in the Diamantina shire were frustrated by many decades of failures of government to act for the people of Birdsville and the Diamantina shire, so they raised half the money themselves to put in a satellite based connection to the main trunk routes across Australia—notwith-standing that at the time there was Telstra or Telecom or their predecessors—because those communities had been left without any telephone service whatsoever. Today the people of Birdsville, Bedourie, Windorah and remote pastoral properties can access internet services via the satellite. This has brought an enormous improvement to these communities. As a result of what we put in place, through funding that we had to get through the expenditure review process, they are now connected to the outside world.

This satellite connection has also been important for telemedicine and for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. And it has been important for those children who must study, because of the tyranny of distance, through the schools of distance education. Some of these children live 500, 600 or 700 kilometres, as the crow flies, from their school. Previously they had to access their teachers through an HF radio network, which would often fail when climatic conditions, being variable, would not allow for a clear voice to be transmitted. But today, as a result of the funding that the previous coalition government put in place, these remote communities, these children studying through schools of distance education, can actually talk to their teachers via the telephone for the cost of a local call—and get a clear voice signal. At the same time they can have a direct connection, via the satellite internet, with their teachers. That is bringing new, modern technologies into these communities in remote parts of Australia.

But I remain very concerned, and I will be opposing this bill with every ounce of energy that I can, because this $2 billion Communications Fund was established as a result of the insistence of the coalition and, I must say, the National Party, when we negotiated the third tranche of Telstra’s sale. We wanted to make sure that there would be a fund held in perpetuity, because we understand that parity of service and parity of price for people living in rural and remote Australia is not a privilege but a right. If, as the Prime Minister talks about, he is governing for all Australians, he will make sure that this bill does not proceed beyond this House. I am concerned that, if this bill passes, future treasurers and future prime ministers will say, through the expenditure review process, ‘Well, they’re just the people of the outback. There are not many of them.’ We can draw on the experience of the past and a few of the examples I have given in the time that I have had available here. We know those people will be left behind in the future if this fund is taken away and pilfered by this Labor government.

I just want to say a couple of things about Telstra Country Wide, because that was another requirement of the coalition government when we negotiated the third tranche of the Telstra sale. Telstra Country Wide was a requirement by law, and it was a condition of their licence that they must provide a physical presence in rural and remote Australia. If they did not provide that physical presence, their licence could be revoked. I have to say that Telstra Country Wide do a magnificent job. I have three points in my electorate that they service. People can ring, for the cost of a local call, and talk to Telstra Country Wide, and they can get information about communications, service faults and other things like that. I am sure that everyone in this House has had the experience of having to ring a call centre. You wait on the line and then you press a button and the hash key, and then you wait a little longer, and you know that your call is very important to the company that you are trying to contact, and you then advance in the queue—and all that sort of thing. Telstra Country Wide are out there in the community, and it was because of the insistence of the previous coalition government, through the laws that we made as we negotiated the full sale of Telstra, that we have seen Telstra Country Wide established and providing that face-to-face service in our rural communities. I just want to say to the Telstra Country Wide staff in my electorate that I commend the work they do. They have been absolutely fantastic in the transition from CDMA to Next G. They have been dealing daily with concerns, and maybe difficulties with handsets and coverage, but they have provided that service and, more importantly, they have provided it on a face-to-face basis.

I know that my time is limited, and I would like a great deal more time to talk on this bill, but I just want to say to the Labor Party: when the Glasson report is handed to the minister, I hope that they will listen to the recommendations of that report. Dr Bill Glasson is a western Queenslander, an ophthalmologist, who is living in Brisbane now. He understands that telemedicine, e-learning and other new technologies, as they come on in the future, will be vital to keeping rural Australia up to date. One of the other people on that committee is another person called Bruce Scott. That is not me; it is in fact the mayor of the remote community of Barcoo Shire, who lives out there in remote Australia—near Windorah and Jundah. He knows about the importance of communications and what they need out there, and I am sure that a recommendation in the Glasson report will be the need to deal with the extension of optic fibre cable connection and building the nation’s infrastructure to these remote communities rather than having them rely on satellites and the proposed OPEL solution out there. I have got to say that a WiMAX satellite based system is not the solution. I would recommend to the minister that he not proceed on that element of the OPEL decision out in that remote part of Australia, because that will not work for those people. Optic fibre cable extension is the way to build the nation’s network.

I want to thank the people who are on the Glasson committee. They will bring important recommendations forward. There is $400 million that does not have to come out of Treasury, the Treasurer, the finance minister or the expenditure review committee. It is there because we put the money aside as part of this process of ensuring that the bush would not be left behind. I say to the member for Flynn and the member for Leichhardt, both Labor members, that if they truly represent rural Australia for the Labor Party, they—

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They’re better than the Nats.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will test them out in this House as to whether or not they support this bill. Their communities will gain great confidence in the Labor Party if they vote against this bill. I represented some of the parts of Flynn that are now represented by the member for Flynn, including Barcaldine and Longreach. The member for Flynn holds that seat by some 130 votes. I am sure there would be 130 people out there watching the actions of the member for Flynn very closely to see whether he is going to support the Communications Fund bill or whether he is going to reject it. They know out there that, if he abandons them, they have an opportunity at the next election to abandon him—and they will abandon the member for Leichhardt as well.

I call on those two new Labor members who represent large rural seats in Queensland to make sure that they represent their electorates and not the Prime Minister, who calls himself a boy from the bush. We will see who the boy from the bush is. That is the challenge for the member for Flynn and for the member for Leichhardt. If you truly represent rural Australia, come over to this side of the House and demonstrate that the Labor Party does understand that there is an important principle in relation to this perpetual Communications Fund. It must be preserved for future generations. If those members want to preserve their place in this chamber after the next election, there is only one option for them to take: abandon their loyalty to that side of the chamber and come over to this side, because it is this side of the House that will make sure that, with communication needs and new technologies, the people of rural Australia are not left behind again, as they were for 13 years under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. I oppose this bill and I thank my colleagues for the additional time they have given me.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to record my objection and opposition to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. This is a poor piece of legislation. It is a piece of legislation that will have not only a negative impact on my electorate of Mitchell but also serious consequences for those in rural and regional Australia.

One of the Howard government’s many great initiatives for rural and regional Australia was the introduction of the $2 billion Communications Fund, which was enacted through the 2005 telecommunications legislation amendment act. This act secured investment in broadband infrastructure for the future of all Australians, especially those in rural and regional areas. I note, with particular concern, that this bill proposes to remove the requirement in the act to keep the balance of the Communications Fund above $2 billion and also permits the use of the fund for another purpose. Therefore, in effect, the outcome of this bill is vintage Labor.

Labor never think ahead or plan ahead on how they will fund infrastructure. Just think about every state government in Australia; think about what they are doing to utilities. They are ripping the dividends out of every utility in Australia. When you consider that, you start to get a picture of Labor thinking in relation to infrastructure funding: ‘Spend now and don’t plan to protect your future revenue base for essential infrastructure.’ Every Labor government seems to abandon prudent measures to fund infrastructure in favour of short-sighted spending measures. Under this bill, how will Labor guarantee that funds and resources go back to rural and regional Australia, once we have smashed the piggy bank, raided the money and spent all the change? The answer we are supposed to believe is: ‘Somehow.’

We understand that Labor made a lot of promises at the last election—promises that they knew they could not keep. They promised, if elected, a broadband tender process to be announced within six months of the election. But now we know they cannot possibly deliver on such a commitment, and it is at least 12 months away. Prior to the election, Labor and Senator Conroy promised that Labor’s broadband tender and the ACC’s wholesale-price-setting process would all be complete, together with a signed contract, within six months of the election. If we were to believe them, it would be occurring by 24 May 2008—an absolutely unrealistic timetable, and they have now been forced to admit it. I believe that this bill is a further admission of the major problems that the government are having in getting broadband right.

Let me also stick up for the sensible and prudent financing that was in the original act. It is much more preferable than Labor’s preference for having funding mechanisms such as new or higher taxes or charges. It is a mechanism that provided for the future of rural and regional Australia without having to seek revenue from other places.

So what is the real purpose of this bill? Its real purpose is to grab money to fund unrealistic election promises for the city at the expense of rural and regional Australia. It must be asked, however, whether Labor and Minister Conroy actually believe that, in less than six months, they could prepare the rollout of the entire tender process. If you look at what such a process entails—and I think this goes to the heart of what this bill is saying—did Labor believe that, in less than six months, they could prepare, publish and consult on the criteria for a $4.7 billion tender? Did they really suggest to the electorate that they could have the industry write and submit its proposals against those criteria? Did they think that an expert assessment panel would assess every one of the industry’s proposals, cabinet would give its approval, negotiations would be conducted, all terms and conditions would be signed and a contract with the preferred bidder would be out within six months—including the introduction and debate of legislation and, as we now know, the amendment to the act that we have before us to raid the telecommunications fund and secure the passage of this legislation through both the House and the Senate? It is a completely unrealistic expectation. We now know that it is going to take much longer—12 months or longer—for them to get a tender process up and running. That 12-month period or longer represents an election commitment they have broken already. However, Labor did continue in their insistence to the electorate that this unrealistic goal could be achieved; hence, we have this legislation before us today.

Unlike Labor’s unrealistic objectives, the policy of the Howard government was not limited simply to broadband. The Communications Fund, which was established and which is now open to raiding if this bill passes this House, provided essential financing for all telecommunications challenges in rural and remote Australia. Furthermore, the $400 million that the fund has returned in interest every three years would have ensured that, as infrastructure needs arose in regional areas, finance would be readily available to support these communities. I think this is a very important point. The member for Grey, who represents 97 per cent of the state of South Australia, made the excellent point that, as technology improves and increases, money is going to be required to ensure that those technological advances reach rural and regional Australia.

Again, Labor knows what it wants to achieve, which is broadband rollout to all of Australia, but it has not addressed the fundamental question of how that infrastructure is going to be funded—and you can cannot separate the end from the means. You cannot separate how you are going to fund those technological upgrades to reach rural and regional Australians from the objective that you are trying to reach.

The funds that were available for much-needed infrastructure upgrades—which included things like mobile towers, broadband investment and the availability of backhaul fibre capabilities—are all gone, if this bill passes this House and the Senate. The previous legislation not only included this essential $2 billion Communications Fund but further provided a holistic telecommunications policy—which, again, rural and regional Australia will suffer from not having, if we pass this bill.

I would like to know how any Labor member from the bush can support the removal of this guarantee of financing for future infrastructure upgrades. Where are the rural and regional Labor members? Why aren’t they here? Why aren’t they speaking on this bill? And why aren’t they consulting with their communities and justifying why they are removing the guaranteed financing for the future of rural and regional Australia? We want to know where they are.

Another problem with this bill is that it lacks detail. Again they know what they want to achieve but they do not how they are going to get there. In fact, one of the hows, the $400 million in interest from this $2 billion fund that would guarantee infrastructure upgrades in the bush, is now going to be removed. Not only did Labor take a communications policy to the last election which lacked a lot of detail—indeed, it had some false details in it—but also the bill being debated in the House today continues to be devoid of any real substance. Again, let us be clear here. The devil is always in the detail and the devil in the detail of this bill is $400 million being removed every three years from rural and regional Australia to fund essential upgrades to their infrastructure.

As Minister Conroy is finding out, it is easy to promise something in opposition. It is easy to say, ‘We want world’s best broadband; we can do it in six months.’ But they are finding out that in government the realities of how you fund essential infrastructure are very different. They are prioritising the city at the expense of the bush. The $2 billion which Labor will take from this fund will more than likely be siphoned to metropolitan areas whilst those Australians in more vulnerable positions will be left behind in the telecommunications wilderness.

In both the semirural communities in my electorate and the new emerging housing corridors in Mitchell, broadband access is unacceptably poor. I have had constituent after constituent ringing me from suburbs like Kellyville, Beaumont Hills and Rouse Hill upset that they cannot gain access to faster broadband. Now they are also concerned to hear that Labor lied to them before the last election. There are at least another 12 months before a tender process can be announced, rather than the stated six months that Minister Conroy promised before the election. In much of Mitchell the infrastructure installed over many years has been pair gain telephone lines and systems in new housing estates. This was based on an assumption of around a 30 per cent take-up of broadband, which is now a vastly out-of-date figure. Many old systems in Mitchell carry phone and dial-up internet with no high-speed ADSL or ADSL2+.

Telstra revealed yesterday in the Hills Shire Times, a local newspaper, one of the problems with the government’s broadband approach and one of the problems that will be revealed from the passing of this legislation. Any delay in the implementation of a broadband network also prevents the private sector from taking up some of the slack in relation to investing in infrastructure. It is interesting to note that in this particular article in relation to telecommunications infrastructure in my electorate Telstra acknowledged that, with the government examining a $4.7 billion spend on a new broadband network, it was withholding any investment in broadband upgrades until it could be certain of what the government was doing. The direct quote is:

... because Telstra was awaiting federal government assurances that profitability would be protected on that network investment.

But it does not stop there. Exacerbating the problem is that there is no detail outlining how and when broadband will be delivered in the new homes and suburbs of Mitchell, the established semirural communities of Mitchell or rural and regional Australia. If you examine some of Minister Conroy’s comments in relation to this matter, he is frustrated, as I read in the papers, with working with the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and the bureaucracy, describing it as an episode of Yes, Minister. Again, he unrealistically promised before the election that in six months he would have a whole entire tender process ready to roll out broadband across Australia and then got into government and realised that there are legal problems you have to look at and there are processes you have to go through to deliver effective government infrastructure.

So the question needs to be asked: did Labor purposely mislead the public before the election or did they simply did not understand the legislative processes and difficulties which arise in enacting legislation? In addition, if you examine the comments of the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, you start to see some of the problems in relation to this bill. The minister for finance said in February:

The final decision on use of the fund will be made in the context of the government’s overall fiscal strategy ...

That was a comment to AAP. Here we go again: more vague, unsubstantiated rhetoric that really does not give you a lot of confidence about what the government is intending to do with this fund. From the bill, we get the understanding that it is going to be spent on broadband, but why are the government taking the $2 billion that has been set aside to ensure that rural and regional Australia has infrastructure funded into the future? They will not tell us how they are going to upgrade the network or what kind of broadband network they are going to build.

It only gets worse. Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, when he was asked in Senate estimates about the broadband network, said:

The final shape of the network ... is as yet unclear ...

If the government does not know what shape the final broadband network is going to take in Australia, why is it proposing to grab the $2 billion from this fund? The broadband network that it is proposing is as yet unclear, and that is incredibly unreassuring for the people of my electorate. It does raise serious concerns for people all around Australia who desperately want broadband support. Why has the government moved to take the money from this fund and from rural and regional Australia? Have things now become clear? If they are clear, I would like to know what kind of broadband network the government proposes. Why does it need the $2 billion now? Until these questions are answered, I will not be supporting this bill. This detail-free approach to policy is hardly a recommendation of this government in its first 100 days.

In essence, the government is now abandoning those vulnerable Australians who face telecommunications inadequacies. The government is deserting those Australians who most need assistance with telecommunications. Rural and regional Australia needs our support. This fund is a practical and realistic way of funding telecommunications infrastructure upgrades into the future. The Labor government is proposing in this bill to rip out this funding mechanism but not to replace it. It wants broadband rolled out to all Australians, but then, with technological advances, how does it propose to upgrade rural and regional networks? In my electorate we are suffering from the problem of outdated telecommunications infrastructure. When technology advances, people are left behind. You will have an infrastructure network across the country that you have funded with your $4.7 billion, but you have not thought about how to upgrade that network. You are not keeping pace with modern society.

The Howard government put into place a forward-thinking, practical and realistic mechanism to fund the future needs of rural and regional Australians; this government is proposing to rip it out. These sorts of short-sighted policies have long-term consequences for those in rural Australia, who need these policies and our support the most. I ask the government and the minister to reconsider this amendment for our future and, in particular, I ask those Labor members who represent country and rural electorates to come in here and tell their constituencies and us how they propose to guarantee to their constituencies that they can upgrade their telecommunications infrastructure without a viable, long-term funding mechanism. Those Labor members need to come in here and tell this House why they would support a bill that removes the only proposed funding mechanism that will ensure that their constituencies have modern and advanced telecommunications networks into the future.

(Quorum formed)

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008 because I am one of many members of this parliament who represent rural and regional people. Whether those members representing rural and regional constituents are aligned with the Labor, Liberal, National, Green, or Democrat parties or are Independents, they should all oppose this bill. As the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government said in his second reading speech:

The intent of the Communications Fund is to address the telecommunications needs of regional, rural and remote Australians.

These needs are not likely to be met forever with one solution for all time. In fact, the Communications Fund was set up to meet the likely ongoing need of regional, rural and remote Australians to gain access to the latest communications technology.

As everyone knows, it can be less than profitable in regional, rural and remote areas to provide the most up-to-date communication services where the full infrastructure must be provided for a small number of consumers. The coalition government quarantined $2 billion in a fund so that there would always be money to ensure that people in the bush got a fair deal when it came to communication services. The expected $400 million in interest and investment earnings from this fund would provide any government with an opportunity to maintain and improve communication services in regional, rural and remote areas.

This Labor government not only wants to take the interest for its own purposes but also wants to be able to take the whole $2 billion fund as well. While Labor says it may spend this on telecommunications infrastructure, it also may not. Even if the government takes all the money and spends it on rolling out telecommunications infrastructure, there remain two more questions. The first is: what happens next time there is a need to upgrade, maintain or replace communication technology in regional, rural and remote areas? Having taken the fund, where will the money to fund any subsequent works come from? The second question is: if this infrastructure rollout is likely to cost $4.7 billion in total, why is the bush being asked to fund almost 43 per cent of it?

The Communications Fund was quarantined specifically to serve the interests of the roughly 30 per cent of people who live in the hardest to serve areas. Why would you use this money to help build infrastructure in the most profitable areas of Australia? Labor governments have demonstrated over and over again how good they are at coming in, spending all our savings on the quick, popular projects and leaving no money and all the hard work for another coalition government. With an expected $308 billion budget surplus, the Rudd Labor government could not possibly need to touch the Communications Fund to build its national broadband network, which it tells us will cost less than $5 billion. Raiding this fund would be tantamount to the Rudd government confirming that it is just not interested in people in regional, rural and remote areas.

Already Labor is missing the point with this national rollout. Labor says it wants to improve the minimum broadband speed for 98 per cent of homes and businesses. Improving the speed means assisting homes and businesses that already have access to broadband. Labor intends to use the Communications Fund to assist everyone but people in regional, rural and remote areas, or, as the minister intimated, Labor might well do something completely different with the money. People in regional, rural and remote areas still do not have adequate phone coverage. Labor is about to snatch their funding for improvements to available communication technology in the long-term future.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, every member representing rural and regional constituents should oppose this bill. This bill seeks to give the Rudd Labor government permission to raid the Communications Fund and ignore the long-term needs of people trying to run international agribusinesses from regional, rural and remote areas of Australia. With a $30 billion plus surplus, wouldn’t you think Labor could improve the offering to the bush, not rip the guts out of it?

Mr Deputy Speaker, you may ask why it is so important for governments to make sure that rural and regional Australians have access to good quality, fast communications. People in these areas have to travel further than city folk to get to most places, even the local shop. With the cost of living increasing, the price of items like petrol will change people’s way of doing business—for example, instead of getting in the car and driving to see a customer or a buyer, the internet will provide different ways of conducting business. Instead of the vet visiting a sick animal, the farmer might send video footage of the animal and upload results of electronic testing devices. Rising prices will force many in rural and remote areas to rethink their methods of operating so as to maintain the viability of small businesses specifically.

The attitude of major telcos like Telstra is to ignore sections of the community who are unable to access commercially viable services. Commercial viability is the prerequisite to delivering profits to telco shareholders, but it works directly against providing services to where regional, rural and remote Australians live, work and travel. The 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses are not in areas that do not include many paddocks, many roads between towns or even many towns and villages, let alone isolated homesteads. What about the other two per cent of homes and businesses? The Communications Fund is specifically aimed at meeting the communication needs of those who fall into the commercially too hard basket. So why should two per cent miss out? The money is there, in the Communications Fund, to make sure that they get their fair share of access to any national communications network. It is definitely not okay to leave them off any national communications network. This is one of the differences between Labor and the coalition.

Labor are happy to forget about the two per cent of homes and businesses in the bush; we are not. In fact, we set up this fund specifically to look after them because we knew commercially driven telcos could not. We have already experienced this in rural and regional areas, where one man died of bee stings at Merriwagga while trying to call his friends to bring his medication. In my own electorate, a man received wasp stings to which he was allergic. His friends called triple 0 from a landline in the township of Tuena, put him in the car and headed towards the ambulance. When he deteriorated, the man’s friends tried to get advice by mobile phone from the ambulance, but their mobile phones would not work. They stopped a survey vehicle on the road and asked the occupants whether they could use their mobile phones, but they did not work either. Luckily, there was a farmhouse nearby and they did make contact on that landline. The ambulance arrived and stabilised the man, who had stopped breathing but had not gone into cardiac arrest. He was then airlifted to Wollongong Hospital and survived.

Labor would blithely say that coverage to 98 per cent of homes and businesses is enough. But we have people with their lives dependent on communications systems, so it is not okay to leave out two per cent. Rather than doctors visiting people, or specialists visiting hospitals and clinics, they can use remote monitoring via the internet—as you well know, Mr Deputy Speaker Washer, being a doctor yourself. This can be life and death stuff. City people often get into trouble when travelling, especially when, in their retirement, they make extended trips. I bet they would not like to become part of the two per cent who do not matter or who are not worth worrying about.

Of course, telecommunications can do much more than save lives. Country people need to do business. They often run international businesses, exporting products all over the world from their rural based business establishments. Many grow, breed or create products that are affected by global markets, international price structures, politics and even the weather on the other side of the world. They are often across, and contributing to, leading-edge research being undertaken in distant laboratories. I regularly hear from city people that they are surprised and in awe to find that our farmers are so in touch with world affairs related to their industry.

Every person and every business in Australia needs access to fast, high-quality communications. This need will continue long into the future and through many advances in technology. With every change will come the need to make sure that the commercially too hard locations are well served. The Communications Fund was set up by the coalition government to do just that.

Labor, already with their hands on a $30 billion surplus, want to raid this fund for a one-off something now. There will be no guarantee of continuing to support the needs of remote, rural and regional areas into the future as technologies change. As usual, Labor in government want to grab the money, spend it all now and forget about the future. They are also happy to forget about two per cent of the population they are supposed to represent and serve.

I condemn the bill before the House, and I ask the Labor members representing rural, regional and remote communities to cross the floor at the vote and join me in properly representing our communities’ interests. In case they do not know who they are, or choose to try and hide, let me list them: the members for Lyons, Dawson, Cunningham, Bass, Wakefield, Corangamite, Charlton, Macquarie, Richmond, Hunter, Throsby, Bendigo, Brand, Shortland, Eden-Monaro, Ballarat, Capricornia, Corio, Robertson, Blair, Forde, Page, Braddon, Lingiari, Longman, Dobell, Flynn and Leichhardt. They are the people on the government side of politics today who purport to represent rural, regional and remote communities. Let us see whether they have the intestinal fortitude to make sure that those rural, regional and remote communities have telecommunications and continue to have access to money to ensure they have telecommunications into the future.

I also ask the Independents, the members for New England and Kennedy, to join me on the side of good sense and good governance of people and their businesses in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia in coming over to this side of the House when we take the vote. I ask them to vote against the introduction of this terrible bill, which is going to affect rural and regional constituents of mine and the constituents of every other rural, regional and remote member from across this great country of ours in this chamber.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in the strongest opposition to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008, which is set to allow money to be used ‘for purposes relating to the creation or development of a broadband telecommunications network’, primarily for city, urban Australia. This money is the $2 billion Communications Fund that was created through the passing of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Future Proofing and Other Measures) Bill 2005. That bill at the time was extremely contentious. I feel quite sincerely justified in standing here and opposing this bill to the very end. What I cannot understand, in referring to the Future Proofing and Other Measures bill, is where the former opposition, now the Labor government, stands on this process. I moved to this side of the House, from the government benches to the opposition benches, and crossed the floor and voted against the sale of Telstra. Every one of the Australian Labor Party members of parliament here, who made up the opposition at that time, voted against the sale of Telstra. They were adamant and strong on the point that it was not to the benefit of the Australian telecommunications industry and not to the benefit of the Australian people to sell off Telstra. Yet what do we see? We see an enormous backflip. Not only are we willing now to sell Telstra; we are also plundering, raping and pillaging the very program that was put in place to protect rural and regional Australians.

In September 2007 the coalition government reinforced the Communications Fund as a perpetual fund by the passage of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. The bill title says it all. That bill required the fund to retain a minimum principal of $2 billion. The bill we have here today repeals this safeguard. This is very distressing for people across Australia. I believe that this government will regret the day that it decided to plunder the fund that provided for the people most vulnerable. It is a very distressing day for all residents in rural and regional Australia.

This bill allows the fund itself, not just the income from it, to be accessed and to be applied in a broader range of financial instruments, including the acquisition of shares, debentures and assets. As for the development of this magical telecommunications network, the bill will have enormous impact on the way in which communications into the future will reach rural and regional Australia, even more so in my circumstances in the Riverina. I feel I have the right to feel enormously aggrieved at the Labor Party’s decision to sell us out once again. At the very time metropolitan areas are benefiting from competition between telecommunication providers and the rollout of new services and technologies, the Rudd Labor government is trying to rip the remedy to the digital divide away from the bush, to spend taxpayer funds on a vague, citycentric plan that Minister Conroy cannot even describe. What a disgrace!

The Rudd Labor government does not just want to raid the interest earned from the fund—though that would be bad enough. It would be bad enough to plunder the interest earned from this regional fund, but to take the fund itself—to take away the very support those currently most disadvantaged rely upon to ensure that they can be full participants in an information society—is nothing short of a crime. It is a crime against the people of Australia. The former coalition government had a clear plan for ensuring fast broadband services were available to the people of rural and regional Australia, and that plan did not require a raid on the Communications Fund.

This income stream, from the interest earned on the $2 billion fund, estimated to be up to $400 million every three years, is quarantined to be used to finance the government’s response to independent reviews of regional communications services. Senator Conroy has recently endorsed the current work of the review team. It was established by the former coalition government, by the former minister. It was headed by Dr Bill Glasson, and he has done an admirable job. So you have the minister coming out and endorsing this work but, at the very same time, you have the government—the government that he is a part of and responsive to—raiding the dedicated resources required to implement the committee’s findings. I find this an unbelievable dichotomy.

The Labor government says it is prepared to use the Communications Fund now to provide better broadband services to 98 per cent of Australian residential and business customers. Optus said in October last year: ‘It is impossible to cover 98 per cent of the population with just fibre-to-the-node.’ Optus said in October that Labor’s plan is undeliverable and will leave millions of Australian families and small businesses stranded without any high-speed broadband—and we all know where those families and small businesses sit: they sit in the forgotten land of country Australia; they sit in the forgotten space, which is supposed to just disappear into oblivion. And that is obviously the intention of this Labor government, for every program that has been slashed in this place has been a rural and regional program and now here we have another attack on rural and regional people.

Surely—since there is such a contingent of union members in this House who are there to represent those who are less fortunate and those who are being impacted upon by the hierarchy and by the giants—there has to be somebody who is willing to stand up and say: ‘This is simply not right. We voted as a party whilst in opposition against the sale of Telstra.’ The Labor Party voted against the sale of Telstra. Now, not only are they into the sale; they are into the bucket. They cannot keep their hands out of the cookie tin. And it is just an absolute disgrace that this act against those people in rural and regional Australia should take place.

There are also comments from Optus’s head of technology and planning, Peter Ferris, who has said that it is unimaginable that areas which are yet to be put on the power grid could feasibly have access to fibre. He said some areas in Labor’s footprint do not even have a grid supply. There is no doubt that fibre broadband is fast, but only if you live within 1.5 kilometres of your local telephone exchange or node. WiMAX broadband has a coverage radius of 20 kilometres. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision to pick a single broadband technology poorly suited to those in rural and regional Australia will mean that one in four Australians will miss out completely on a high-speed broadband service under Labor. Just relegate us into a black box, and who cares? And the fact that they are raiding the Communications Fund—which is essentially, as I have said, designed and named for rural and regional Australia—is absolutely unacceptable. Again I say that Labor has shown its true colours when it comes to supporting the needs of the seven million people who live outside the capital cities.

A fibre rollout in South Korea cost the South Korean government $40 billion. Australia’s landmass is so much greater than South Korea’s—yet the government thinks that $4.7 billion will reach our landmass? It is an absolute obscenity. To raid the Communications Fund is simply robbing our regional communities of future vital telecommunications services, and many of my constituents in the Riverina electorate are already facing tough circumstances. They had drought for seven years. They have had to continue to operate on small incomes, if any income at all. They have had their backs to the wall but they have kept their spirits high. They need communications to run businesses. It is a fact that we, in country Australia, actually do run businesses. It might come as a great surprise—

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it does not.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It does, I am sure, come as a great surprise to know that rural and regional Australians do run businesses, and we are just as entitled to have communications services as those who are in the city. We have broadband issues, we have landline connection issues, we have mobile phone coverage issues already, and a lot of money has been spent trying to resolve them. And that money, in that fund, was designed to continue to try and treat those issues to provide an adequate—not a great but an adequate—service for rural and regional Australians.

Last week my office was notified of a local business in Wagga Wagga—and an article appeared in Wagga Wagga’s Daily Advertiser on Monday about it—which had been waiting for two months for their business telephone, internet and merchant lines to be connected after their business relocated. They had their phone lines diverted through to a mobile, but then they were incurring additional charges and the redirected line was disconnected days before the new lines were connected. This business was losing up to $40,000 a day—and they make their money between December and June because they are an agriculture based company. I suppose that is testament to the fact that anything in agriculture is simply, obviously, to many people not worth investing in—and that is a crying shame. The original work order said the work was supposed to have happened on 17 December but that paperwork was lost.

In the Area News on 28 February 2008, there was a story about a local welder in Griffith who had cut off his business landline and gone solely with a Next G phone. Despite being able to see the base tower, high on the hill, from his workshop, the businessman claims his phone has appalling reception, when it has reception at all. He is missing calls and voice messages. The whole process for him to conduct his business is rather difficult. There have been more than a dozen complaint calls and his phones have been sent away to technicians twice. He has been forced to take measures to try and ensure that he can get any calls at all. The mere fact of outlining in this House the issues that we are confronting currently is just a demonstration of why we desperately need the Communications Fund in situ, in place. No party should be able to come along and rob rural and regional people of the only opportunity they have to fix these problems.

A business in Leeton came to me in January because the only replacement Next G phone suitable for them was not going to be made available until May this year. This is a family based business and they have only ever dealt with Telstra. However, they purchased an LG CDMA phone and car kits for the directors’ vehicles and prime movers. These were costly and still work without any problem. There are 16 in total. All the phones are preset only to business numbers and triple 0, which has meant another charge for the company. They used a Wagga Wagga based company for the service, who informed the business that there is not a suitable phone on the market for them. Leeton is not exactly at the end of the earth. Leeton is a vibrant community of around 11,000 people, hosting vibrant industries, and yet, right in the heart of it, there are these problems.

The recommendation for that company, while they are waiting for a suitable phone to come on the market, was that they should purchase the prepaid phones and new SIM cards—and they are about $150 for the cheapest ones, which means a total of $2,500 for this business—and then, when the new ones come on the market, they should throw the old ones away and switch to the others that may be better designed for them to use permanently. I do not think this is an adequate response. As I said, this is not the end of the earth; this is a vibrant community of around 11,000 people, with significant industry and industry development. Thankfully, there is new industry just coming into Leeton which will provide employment opportunities, but we cannot even get valuable communications processes going for these people.

I have written to Minister Conroy and urged him to consider the concerns of many of the constituents throughout my electorate of Riverina who have made contact with my office, extremely frustrated about the coverage that they have in many of these areas. There are costs associated with the changeover. I have had complaints about people having to send new phones back, about Telstra reprogramming software and replacing handsets, exchanging handsets and trialling devices just in an attempt to replicate the CDMA service which has worked in the past. How are we going to afford to do this in the future, when the Communications Fund is no longer available to us? The fund that the Labor government is raiding here today was designed to try to overcome exactly the problems that I am outlining in the House today. This is just a snapshot. I have pages of problems here that I will have no chance of getting through this evening. But this is what this fund was designed to do: to give us some equity as Australian citizens.

It is extremely important for our mobile phone users to have coverage where there has previously been a CDMA service. I have been pleading with the new minister to understand that, despite assurances on a daily basis from Telstra that the Next G network is delivering the same services as CDMA, the reality is that there are still so many problems with the hardware being reported to my office. I do not actually doubt the network. I think the network may be out there if you can actually access some hardware that can connect to it. That is the minister’s problem as well: you cannot just have a network and not provide the tools to access the network. It is simply not delivering on the promises. Thankfully, the minister has done the right thing. I thank him and applaud him for that. He has evoked the licence condition that the former minister applied—that being that if the Next G network coverage was not equivalent to that of the CDMA network then the licence condition would be enforced so that Telstra could not shut down the CDMA network until such time as that had taken place. Minister Conroy has done that, to his credit. I say thank you, on behalf of the people of the Riverina, for not allowing Telstra to shut down the CDMA network when it is obvious that there are still many issues to resolve.

More than 110 residents and businesspeople within the small district of Mangoplah attended a community meeting on 9 January 2008 to voice their concerns about the CDMA closure. Remember that Telstra were to close down the CDMA network in January. And here we had 110 residents turning up to a public meeting in a small community saying that they had once had CDMA and they were not getting the equivalent coverage under Next G. They wanted an understanding of what they could do to get improved Next G coverage. You know what? The Telstra Country Wide area manager, Mr Cottrill, answered several questions and spoke to individuals but then basically said, ‘You know, we need money to put up a base station so that you can get equivalent coverage to what you had with CDMA.’ That is what this fund is for. It is to provide money—and it should be used to provide money—to put up such base stations. Mr Cottrill, who does a very good job, by the way, also agreed that in the circumstances it would be better that a base station be built in Mangoplah. That is on the priority list; however, there will be no signs of a base station in that area for at least 12 months. I wonder what is going to happen now, given that he thought that he had a fund somewhere to draw from in order to get his base station. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Mr Albanese) adjourned.